So here we are celebrating Labour day

May 1st, Labour Day, was on a friday so we had a lovely long weekend. Protest on the friday and picnic on the saturday, good stuff! Here are the highlights in pictures.

What is so totally cool about French protests are the slogans, which are usually rude, subtle and/or funny.

A personal favorite: This is a play on words on "Gone with the wind" (Autant en emporte le vent in French) with the first word a homonym of OTAN- Nato. A lot of French people are pissed off with Sarkozy for making France rejoin its integrated military command, which it famously left in 1966.




Protests in France are for all, of every age. This little girl, who had been casually left sitting on the reycling bin, had a sign that read: Nobody should let themselves be walked over, not even Carla! referring of course to France's first lady.





You could hardly move for these posters, the "Casse toi pov' con" ones. This means "sod off you sad bastard" and was famously said by Nicolas Sarkozy to a guy who refused to shake his hand.at the Agricultural Fair, and caught on video.





Another fave: "Couilles en or", or Balls of gold is slang for someone very rich. This says that as long as there are golden balls, there will be steel blades...


Karcher, Taser, Charter: the State's sponsors. Karcher is a brand of industrial hose, which Sarkozy poetically said he would use in the suburbs to flush away all the undesirables. Taser for the increasingly violent police methods. Charter for the 30000 expulsions of illegal residents


Outside the Republican guard.







Everybody had something to protest about: here the Tamil community marching about the current situation in Sri Lanka.




Paris, Notre Dame, the river... and politics.









These were plastered all over to Paris to represent the 28000+ people who have been deported.









It all ended at la Bastille, the symbolic location of popular uprising. Another protest started at Hotel de Ville.


One of the joys of living in Paris is the picnics by the Seine. In the summer it can get a bit crowded as the parisians squeeze on the riverside flagstones. But in Spring, on a chilly night, it was great!

Aaaah! Paris!











before...and after













As we were walking home, we crossed the Town Hall. In protest to the Pecresse Law on Higher Education and Research, professors, librarians and researchers have been walking in a circle for, at that point, 972 hours!! Not the same people obviously.

So here we are in London and an Egyptian tomb

Chook and I went off to London for a birthday weekend and it wa sabsolutely great. We saw the Rothko exhibition at Tate modern, ate pub lunches and English breakfasts, saw my family and met up with some old uni friends for a couple of drinks. We went to the Britsh museum and plodded around in the snow which fell in abundance in London and the South East on Sunday and Monday.


We had an amazing time and one of my highlights was visiting the new Egyptian gallery in the BM. I've always loved their Egyptian wing and when I was a child would spend ages with my poor suffering mother looking at the Rosetta stone and animal mummies, the dried out corpse of Ginger and other slightly gruesome displays. Later I also started to appreciate the statues and artefacts, pottery, jewellry and so on, and know a bit more about Ancient Egyptian history and archeology.

This new gallery is like nothing I have ever seen before. It is a actually an average sized room that is solely dedicated to the tomb of an temple accountant who lived three and a half thousand years ago. The famous Egyptian tombs are typically royal ones : from the valley of the Kings to Tutankhamon's, or the even more ancient pyramids. The lives and deaths of the everyday Egyptians are comparatively unknown. A few years ago the Louvre had an exhibition on the people who made the pyramids, not slaves as it turns out(contrary to popular belief) but highly skilled craftsmen, experts in stone cutting, woodwork, engraving, painting and so on. It looked in to the lives of the Egyptian working classes, neither pharoahs nor farmers nor slaves.

In a similar way, this tomb is the tomb chapel of Nebamun, a "scribe and counter of grain" who died in around 1400 BC. His tomb chapel was discovered in the 1820s by a Greek grave robber who later sold the incredible paintings that are on display. Though we know the tomb was located near the city/temple devoted to Amun, where he worked, in Thebes (today Luxor),the exact location is today lost. Though it is a tomb, the paintings are a celebration of Nebamun's life, with paintings glorifying his everyday activities, from fishing to family and his job. The eleven large fragments, which have been restored and preserved over the last decade, are beautiful in colour and the level of detail in each one is captivating; the artist is unknown but has been called an "ancient Egyptian Michaelangelo".

One painting shows a young Nebamun fishing on the marshes and surrounded by spieces of birds and reeds and fat fish. Amongst the reeds his cat is somersaulting and hunting. The different species symbolise life, rebirth and vitality which is what the painting inspires.



In another, we see Nebamun at work. His name literally means "he works in the service of Amun", to whom the temple which employed him was dedicated. Here he is counting and inspecting cattle, who have been painted in such a way that you can hear the clatter of their hooves and the shouts of the servants driving them.



In another, slave giirls entertain at a banquet: a display of luxury, sensuality and wealth.


The exhibition also has a terrific 3D video that explains the tomb chapel's probable location and layout, and has some nice artefacts such as toys, jewelry, games and preserved offerings. The explanations are great and fascinating (such as the fact that the word "Amun", present everywhere in the hieroglyphs, including in Nebamun's name, was smashed centuries later) and to top it all the whole gallery, like the rest of the museum, is free.

So here we are holidaying in Bulgaria

Chook and I went to Bulgaria for the last ten days of August for romantic European cultural, natural and beachy relaxation.



Started in Sofia, the capital










and moved down to Blagoevgrad, the district capital and university city surrounded by foresty hills.










From there we took a day trip to Rila Monastery, the biggest in the country, alone in the middle of a valley and up in the mountains.






We then went to Plovdiv, the "Paris of the Balkans" with cobbled streets, Roman ruins and numerous art galleries.







From there to Burgas, on the coast, from whence we went first to Nesebar (international touristy beachy and UNESCO world heritage site)





and then Kiten (Bulgarian touristy beach). here are assorted highlights and descriptions.

******

Sofia is a boring capital city of which we saw two parts : the center with its big roads, plazas, communist buildings, cranes and renovations and domed Orthodox churches; and a nicer, small streets and less trafficky part to the North.















One modern, luxurious department store near the former communist headquarters (roughly six times the size of the Parliament) was deserted; another, selling mainly food in a turn of the 20th iron and steel building, was packed.

*****

Blagoevgrad is a nice pedestrian student town dedicated to concrete and set amongst rolling forested hills. Our hotel was overrun with wedding and birthday parties. Place was vaguely shabby but had loads of restaurants and we checked out the jazz club.

*****

From there we took a bus to Rila Monastery (rebuilt in 19th)


which is stunning and set in a valley sided with mountains of forests and torrents. It comprises a church, loads of arched galleries and lurid murals.

























Best thing ever though was when we explored an old abandoned building nearby, which was a former restaurant/hotel from the Soviet times. It had just been locked up and left, and we stepped back in time into the restaurant, the kitchens and in the old wallpapered bedrooms (still partly furnished) before getting told off. Even found a crate of vodka bottles saying "Made in USSR"! Missed the last bus back to Rila village (22 km away down forest road) and hitched a ride with a tourbus of Bulgarian pilgrims.

*****

Plovdiv, a couple of hours away by bus is in the center of the country.


It's a strange mix : roman ruins, loads of art galleries, long pedestrian shopping roads, squares with cafés, winding cobbled streets that climb around the hill, brightly painted museum/houses from the 19th. Lovely, except for huge motorway that zooms under the hill (we had a romantic dinner overlooking it). We visited a house/art museum full of beautiful antique furniture and Bulgarian paintings from the 19th onwards, saw Roman amphitheater













and a small roman stadium which is now surrounded partially built over with concrete blocks and is semi-submerged under a shopping street.

It was also in Plovdiv that we were confronted with the worst, most disgusting cocktail ever, which I ordered because I couldn't figure how it could be drinkable; it wasn't.

Sweet sin: whisky, peach liqueur, Bailey's, pineapple juice.

*****

Time to hit the beach. Bus to Burgas on the black sea coast and then to Nesebar, UNESCO world heriage site. It is a kilometer or so away from Slanchev Bryag, or Sunny Beach, which is overrun by the mafia, fluorescent British tourists reading the Sun, touts and shops selling beach equipment. We spent less than ten minutes there (time to walk through it) and headed
























for Nesebar which is exactly the same only has monuments instead of the beach (actually it does have one, which we tested : rocks and algae but good waves). Lots of old churches filled with icons and little streets lined with traditional wooden houses.Very touristy but does have a few interesting old buildings scattered about and a very lovely coastline though, must be nice out of season.

*****

And finally in Kiten we did absolutely bugger all except lie on the beach, surf the waves, get sunburnt, eat (including excellent calamari) and laze by the pool. This latter we had access to, having the choice between the nicest and most expensive hotel in town and the Hotel Balkanika, which could have been the setting for a movie on abandoned mental asylums in the 1930s. It was cracked, peeling, overgrown and had a view over the municipal rubbish dump. So we went to the other.

On the way back to Sofia, we stopped for the day in Burgas from where we were going to take the nighttrain. It's a coastal city but not touristy, so we checked out the beach, the ethnographical museum and the archeological museum. The beach had its share of rather dingy looking parasols but also a concrete jetty, an abandoned water slide, and Burgas international shipping port. By the beach were more abandoned buildings from Soviet times, including a large boat/restaurant which, according to a guy we got chatting to, was once a fashionable spot for Communist officials from all over the eastern block. Impossible to get close too unfortunately.

*****

And other :
*Food: two kinds of cheese : white (Sirene - feta) and yellow (Kashkaval- bland cheddar). Menus also proudly boast "processed cheese".
*Bulgarian girls, despite diet of pizza, hot dogs and cheese, are all incredible slim and stunning. The preferred uniform is micro-shorts, micro top, huge 80s haircut, long painted nails and high heeled sandals. Gulp. the men are plump, non descript and apparently hairless (study undertaken at Kiten beach).
*Bulgarian wine is drinkable : Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from Melnik region is well known. We liked the Chateau Boyar and drank Chateau Karnobat. Zagorka beer is good too.
* Food : a traditional salad is Shopska : cucumbers, tomatoes, onions topped with grated sirene
*The best thing in Bulgaria is Vishna Sok- cherry juice- which is usually sugar and water and about 10% fruit juice. Massively addictive.
* Bulgarians are obsessed with ghastly singing+ dancing in traditional folk costumes amongst mountainous scenery. At any given time two TV channels are playing some.
* Food : usually some kind of grilled meat (chicken, lamb or pork), either on a stick or just a chunk or meatballs. Fried potatoes (topped with cheese), various salads, Tarator (yoghurt, cucumber, dill and walnut) soup. Stuffed vine leaves and cabbage leaves. Bluefish (size of sardines) and many others by the sea, trout in the mountains. Endless supplies of junk food, from McDonalds to pizza, to homegrown burgers (revolting - plastic pig eyeball ham in panini bread and containing Russian salad and cabbage) and hot dogs and various sweet and savoury pastries. HOW do the girls do it? Most food comes in two possible portion sizes.
* Everything is written in the cyrillic, which is fun to learn and even better when you decode words that mean something to you (office, McDonalds, garage and a lot of words are linked to French too).
*Bulgarian night trains are cold, uncomfortable, overbooked and loud Soviet pieces of shit that threaten to derail every second. Not recommended.
*To say "yes", the Bulgarians shake their head, not a side to side wobble like the Indians but an actual (to us) "no". Impossibly confusing.
*Beware, upon checking into a hotel, the plastic keyring : it means they are giving you the worst room ever. Twice we changed rooms after plastic keyring and the rooms were infinitely nicer.
*Food: Sach: a hot plate full of meat,onions and pickles. Nice.
*When someone dies, A4 pages are stuck around town with their photo, dates and so on. Lots outside churches (see photo) but also in the street, on front doors, in the churches, etc.